THE PROPERTIES OF PROTOPLASM 



ABC representing affectability, and A CD repre- 

 senting the opposite property. Along the line 

 EOF, you have that state of livingness conditioned 

 by the simultaneous 



possession of some affec- ^ FUNCTIONAL INERTIA ^ 

 tability (OF) and some 

 inertia, (OE) ; whereas 

 at AB, affectability is 

 maximal, and functional 

 inertia infinitely small ; 

 at DC, affectability is 

 infinitely small, and 

 functional inertia maxi- 



4 



mal. This latter state 

 is that of death. There 

 is thus an element of 

 tending towards death 

 at the vital level EOF. 

 And does not all life 

 tend to death ; did not 

 Bichat define life as 



" the sum of the con- Affectability 



ditions which ward off 



death," and did not a much older thinker say, "in 

 the midst of life we are in death " ? 



The Frenchman's pessimism is biologically justi- 

 fiable. These two vital tendencies or properties of 

 living matter the one to respond to, the other 

 to be independent of the outer world of stimuli 

 are inextricably interwoven in the texture of the | 

 organism ; it is the unravelling of them, to some 



